Impact by Design II - Managing Design Thinking Teams

PI: Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel

Abstract

The project team “Impact by Design” has set as its goal the pursuit of further studies regarding the concrete usage of Design Thinking in companies. After having focused on the compilation of a large data pool in 2013/2014, we now want to dig deeper into certain patterns that came up during our data analysis. Taken together, these patterns point to one crucial theme: the role of management. We discovered this to be the most important factor for the success of Design Thinking in companies. At the same time, Design Thinking causes completely new challenges for employees in leading positions. However, the existing body of research literature on “design leadership” oftentimes remains abstract. With our research we will therefore determine concrete best practices. We plan in-depth interviews with managers and team members, which shall lead to a theoretical model that we want to generate from our data. Our overall aim is to further facilitate the deployment of Design Thinking in the corporate context by creating recommendations for an adaptable management paradigm.